The Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Eskender Bariiev, on the air of TV channel 4, commenting on the words of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky about the creation of a negotiating platform for the de-occupation of Crimea, said that Russia will sit down at the negotiating table only if it will be very concerned about the issue water supply to the peninsula.
“We must understand that there can be a platform only when the Russian Federation sits down at the negotiating table. There must be political and economic prerequisites for this. In this case, there is one tool – the issue of water. When the Russian Federation will be very concerned about the issue of water supply to Crimea, then they will sit down at the negotiating table and create a kind of platform in Crimea”,- Bariiev said.
In his opinion, one of the main tasks of Ukraine is not to try to create a platform, but to try to strengthen the circle of friends and the coalition of partners who clearly support the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
In parallel, Eskender Bariiev believes that Ukraine does not have an integral and systematic state policy on the restoration of territorial integrity and de-occupation of Crimea, “since we hear from high-ranking officials heterogeneous information about the strategy: some say that it exists, others that it is being developed, the third – that it is necessary to separate the issue of Crimea from the issue of the Donbas entirely.”